Welcome Home
by BurgerTac
Summary: When they discover a strange diary in their new home, orphans Lemy and Langston find themselves wrapped up in the mysteries and affairs of the strange family that once owned their house: the Louds.


A clear blue sky hung above their heads as they walked down the sidewalk. During the summer, the Michigan sky was supposed to either be raining or threatening to rain, but this was one of those rare nice days where the clouds kept their water to themselves. A wind passed by the two boys; one shivered while the other breathed it in. The boy who shivered was a thin, short boy dressed in rocker getup with a tattoo inked on one arm. The other boy was a taller, tanner, more built and yet still skinny young man dressed in uniform of a pizzeria's delivery boy. He looked down to his friend, noticed his discomfort, and said, "You cold, Lemy?"

"I'm always cold," the boy named Lemy said in turn.

"Put on your bandanna. Heat mostly escapes through the head, so-"

"Yes, Mom. I'll put on my bandanna, Mom."

The other boy frowned, but he let it slide. Lemy's hand slipped into his pocket and retrieved the bandanna; a patterned piece of cloth that was a little worn and ragged. That didn't matter; Lemy still liked it. He wrapped it around his forehead. It helped, but not that much.

_Shouldn't be worrying about crap like this, _Lemy thought to himself. _Today's a good day. I'm finally gonna live in a real home. Goodbye, orphanage. Hello, regular house._

Lemy peered back at his friend, and smirked lightly. _All thanks to you, bro. Ain't gonna be a fag and say it out loud, but I love ya, Langston._

The orphanage had been hard on Lemy and Langston, but it was all either of them had ever known. Both of them never knew the family life; they both seemed to have been born without parents, as if they spawned randomly in front of the orphanage's front door. That was fine, Lemy supposed, because you can't miss what you don't have. What wasn't fine was how no one – literally no one – seemed to want them. Every time some rich couple dropped by to adopt a kid, their eyes always seemed to scan past the two of them. What made them afraid? Was it the scars? The tattoos? The angry and sad glints in their eyes? You'd be angry and sad too if your earliest memories was having your hand hit with a ruler for being a little too troublesome.

It was a good thing that Langston, his best friend in the world, against all odds, managed to luck his way into getting a lottery ticket. A _winning _lottery ticket. As far as anyone at the orphanage was concerned, they were both eighteen now, so they were free to go wherever they want. Lemy and Langston both liked the new freedom, but the sting of being… unwanted, to put it lightly, wasn't going to go away easily.

And people wondered why he listened to angsty rock all the time.

Speaking of Langston, he had been talking the entire time while Lemy was dipping into his thoughts. "-this place is awesome, Lemy, you're gonna love it. Needs a little fixing up, but I've put in some work on it already. The windows were cracked, and the garage was just shit, but I cleaned those up a little. Because I have money. _From my job_."

Those last four words sounded like he was trying to suggest something.

"I'll look for a job," Lemy said. "Maybe I can start finally recording music and selling it-"

"A real job, Lemy. Cleaning dishes, delivering food, getting CEOs their coffee… something like that."

"I can't find a job that quick!" Lemy protested.

"That's true. I guess, in the meantime, you're welcome to sell your blood for a little money." Langston chuckled teasingly.

The two young men turned the corner, finally on the street where their new home was supposed to be situated. Lemy's eyes shot back and forth as he walked by the homes of his new neighbors; it seemed like a typical suburban neighborhood. Nice lawns with green grass, garden gnomes and other weird ornaments (is that a crystal ball?), and a few kids happily playing in the street under the watchful eye of their smiling parent. Lemy couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy.

"So which one's our house?" he asked to take his mind off the kids enjoying what he never had.

Langston stopped dead in his tracks. He then turned and pointed at the house they were standing in front of. "This one," he said, a pleased grin on his lips. "Welcome, Lemy, to our new home!"

"Woah," said Lemy.

Their new house was much bigger than he expected. Langston stood there, grinning widely, as his best friend drank in the sight. It was a large house, with green paint adorning its outside and blue roofs that were littered with little prizes like frisbees and shoes. There were at least two or three floors, each with windows all over that glinted and sparkled with cleanliness. There was a garage too, which pleased Lemy just fine: if he ever got the motorcycle he had always wanted, he would finally have a place to put it.

Lemy noticed Langston staring, and turned his head to him. "So what do you thi-"

"It's awesome."

The taller boy nodded. "Glad to hear it."

As they walked up to the door, Lemy read their address off the side of the door.

"1216 Franklin Avenue..."

The boys didn't have many belongings. That may sound pretty sad, but it did make unpacking much easier for them. Lemy's first instinct was to claim the attic as his room, but upon peering inside and noticing the many spider webs and dead bats littering the small room, he thought better of it. He just took the room next to the one Langston chose. "Gee, there's a lot of rooms here," Lemy noted as he opened the door to his room and scanned the ground for any dead rodents.

"Only one bathroom, though," Langston grunted. "On the plus side, we got a linen closet down the hall."

"Yay," Lemy sarcastically muttered.

They deposited their things in their rooms, then went back downstairs to the kitchen. The stairs creaked and groaned under their weight. The wood of each step seemed almost ancient. Lemy raised an eyebrow and wondered if Langston was going to have it fixed. "Hey, Langston, you gonna have this fix-"

"Whatever it is, not tonight," he replied. "Got night shift. I'm just gonna go grab a snack and then get to work."

"You work as a delivery boy. You basically get free snacks whenever you're out on the job," Lemy giggled.

Langston seemed confused. He cocked his head and asked, "How so?"

"I mean, if someone's got pepperoni pizza, there's nothing stopping you from taking just _one _slice of the pie. I mean, honestly, who's gonna notice?" Lemy paused for a moment, and tapped his chin as he thought about what he had just said. "Not gonna lie, that sounded smarter in my head. Umm… anyways… when are we getting a TV?"

"When we can afford it. And we'll be able to afford it when someone pulls their act together and gets a damn job."

"Boo! Gay!"

Langston rolled his eyes. He loved Lemy like a brother – they basically were, at that point – but goddamn why did he have to be so… _Lemy_?

Entering the ancient kitchen, the smell of dust and dank humidity hit their nostrils. Glancing at the wall, Lemy could see a hint of fungus growing – the kind that looked so nasty that even he, as much as he loved to flirt with Death to satisfy his growling stomach, wasn't going to take a bite from it. He never even liked mushrooms that much anyway.

He looked back to Langston digging around in the fridge and revealing a small bag of red apples. "Bought them recently," the blonde explained. He dumped the bag on the table, and took one. He brought the apple to the sink and turned the knob. A few seconds of churning passed, and water poured out of the faucet. The pipes in the house were prehistoric, Langston knew, but the water looked cleaner than Flint's water, and that was good enough for him. He doused his piece of fruit under the cold current and took a crunchy bite. He then gestured to Lemy, and then to the other apples. "Eat."

"Apples for dinner?"

Langston shrugged. "Would you rather have orphanage gruel?"

"Fair enough."

Not even bothering to wash his apple, Lemy bit into it. The sweet juices of the fruit cascaded down the sides of his mouth. It wasn't a steak dinner, but it was way better than the stuff he was used to eating. Sadly. Lemy's life hadn't been a happy one, but the young man figured that it would be better to not dwell on it. There were better things to occupy oneself with.

Like old rock music. And porno.

Speaking of which… Langston had just walked out the front door. Lemy reached into his pocket and pulled out his music player. It was an ancient piece of tech called an _iPod Touch_ that people barely used anymore because of a whole host of reasons that Lemy didn't know or care about. All he knew was that he liked them. They had a thin, slick design with nice colors. And they had other features too: cameras, apps, video players, Internet…

_So it's just a smartphone but worse, right? _Langston had once asked.

_Ah, shut up, what do you know? _Lemy had maturely responded.

Lemy plugged in his earphone jack – another piece of tech people liked to avoid now, the snobby pricks – then popped them into his ears. He pressed the only button on the thing to turn it on… only to be met with a flashing empty battery symbol.

"Oh, come on!"

He rushed back upstairs to find his charger. After tearing his new room to shreds for a few minutes, Lemy stumbled hopelessly back into the hallway with a vacant expression etched on his face. "No battery… n-no music," he mumbled with the cadence of a little boy lost at the mall.

_So no TV, no Internet, and now no music… what the hell am I supposed to do now?! Dammit, I'm booooooooooored!_

Lemy sighed deeply, angrily. He popped the earbuds out of his ears and stuffed them roughly back into his jeans. He stared around at the empty house, and sighed again. Maybe some people would take this opportunity to use their imagination or something, but Lemy was never that kind of person. He needed stimulation; something external to hit on that internal emotions and feelings crap he didn't want to deal with by himself (_oof was that self-reflection? Dear God, it's getting worse! I need entertainment now!_). Fingers tapping on his smooth chin, Lemy growled as he tried to think of some way to occupy himself while Langston was out. It was too early to go to sleep, and too late to go outside. If only there was a way…

Then the answer hit him. And he almost hit himself in the face from how obvious it was.

"Dude," he said to no one, "I have a whole new house to explore! I can just poke around here, get a look there, and maybe I'll find something cool. Like… like maybe there was a mad scientist living here. Or a really famous rock star. Hell, there were a lot of bats, maybe there was a vampire here before!"

He thought about what he had just said for a moment. "Okay, probably not. But still, a boy can think about stuff. Now," he said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them, "where do I go first? Up? Down? Really down into the basement? That last one sounds kinda cool, actually. Never lived in a house with both an attic and a basement."

_That's because you've never lived in a house before._

Lemy tapped on his temple. "Hey, brain, you gotta fact-check everything I say?"

Whatever. It was decided. To the basement he will go, braving the odds like that hobbit in a movie he saw once. His Hero's Journey was cut slightly short, though, when Lemy, upon putting just one foot on the top step, felt the wooden board crack underneath his weight. He cried out as his leg sunk into the newly made hole. Splinters on either side cut into his clothes and skin, and Lemy bit down hard on his finger to keep from screaming. Tears were welling in his eyes. He tried to move, but his leg wouldn't budge.

"_Come on, c-come on!_" he whispered as he tried again and again to dislodge himself. He grabbed either side of his leg and finally, with enough effort to move a mountain, pulled his leg out and sent himself flying backwards into the wall like a slapstick routine. The back of his skull slammed into the wall so hard it cracked (the wall, not his skull). Lemy let out a rough cry of pain as he cradled the pained area. "Owowowowowowow."

He quickly swiped his bandanna off and tapped the back of his head. It hurt, but not enough to make him scared about breaking something. And seeing how there were no stars in front of his eyes, he assumed he didn't hurt himself too bad. But then again, he knew what people said about assuming: it makes an ass out of um and e.

Wait, fuck, that's not how it went…

The stinging pain coming from his leg pushed that to the side. He checked his left leg, and groaned at the sight. Don't get him wrong, he liked torn jeans, but the rips on his pants right now were ridiculous. "Langston's not gonna be happy about this," he bemoaned. He looked past the torn pants to his leg, and hissed lightly. While not hospital-worthy, the cuts on his legs were painful and bleeding. Lemy tried to touch it, and ended up wincing in pain. "Gah!" he cried.

_Come on, suck it up, Lem. Can you imagine what Gwen would say if she saw you on the ground like this? She'd laugh and then rub some dirt in it._

Gwen was a girl Lemy knew from the orphanage. Unlike him, she was adopted, and by a good family at that. She will henceforth never be mentioned again.

Lemy growled as he forced himself back to his feet. He could stand, which told him that, at the very least, he wasn't badly hurt. "Stupid broken stair… I'll show you," he grumbled as he hobbled towards the broken step. He peered at the board he had just split, and cringed slightly when he saw the blood staining the edges. He reached down to touch them. His fingers brushed the sharp splinters, oxidized by his drying blood… until they felt something else. Something that wasn't as hard. Something that felt suspiciously like… leather.

"What?"

The teen shoved his entire hand into the gaping hole. He thought that maybe he had just imagined it, or was mistaking what he was feeling for something else… but no, it was clearly leather. He felt the leather end somewhere, so he hooked his fingers around the edge and pulled whatever it was out of the hole.

The "whatever it was" turned out to be a book.

"What… what the hell is this?" Lemy muttered as he cradled the book in his hands. He flipped it in his hands, but there was no title or author's name on either side. The cover was just a dark black leather on both sides. It seemed so… old.

Lemy had a bad feeling, for some reason. A part of him told him to put it down. Another part of him urged him to go forward.

His tongue, like pink lightning, swiftly wet his lips. The book felt surprisingly weighty in his hands. He opened up the first page, and was met with golden writing on the yellowing page.

"This book belongs to… L. Loud," he read.

He flipped the book in his hands again. "L. Loud," he repeated, his brow crinkled in confusion. Was that a pen name or something? That was way too weird to be a normal name. Lemy felt something… well, he couldn't really describe what he was feeling. It was more than just confusion about a name though. Something about the name "L. Loud" was stirring something inside him. Something instinctual and unconscious. He tapped his face, and felt it heated. "What's wrong with me, it's just a book. Nothing special," he murmured, trying and failing to convince himself that it was nothing important.

Lemy put the book back in the hole, but remembered that he had nothing else to do. The writings of L. Loud would be his only entertainment for the evening. He shrugged and picked the journal back up again. He thumbed past the first page to the next one, finding, to his relief, black ink instead of the pre-established golden. It would've been pretty hard on the eyes to read something written in the color of piss.

"Stay classy, Lem."

And with that, he began to read.

He was surprised to see that there was a dedication in the book. He didn't think people wrote those in their diaries. Then again, he wasn't a girl, so he had no idea what went into a diary.

"To my dearest family," he read aloud. "Though we're all separated and sour now, I know the love we share, be it platonic or otherwise, will never fade."

Lemy's face crinkled in seeming disgust. "'Or otherwise'?" he repeated

He continued reading from the page, though he kept his reading silent: _I do not know if any of you will ever find this, but I will leave it here in our old home, in the homes that someone from our clan will discover it, and discover the tale of those of us who left with our sins. If one of you, my sisters, who stayed behind finds this, then please read and understand why we did what we did. And if one of the sisters who came with me to the new home finds this, then please show this to the others...and perhaps to our children, so they understand where they came from._

"Okay, I definitely shouldn't be reading this," Lemy whispered. There was something almost reverent in his tone. "The chick who lived here before left it for her… Loud family, I guess. So this has nothing to do with me..."

He said that as he flipped to the next page, the official first. His curiosity was far too peaked to be held back by concerns about privacy.

He read the date on top. "Whoa, this goes back to 2016?! This whole family feud is older than me!"

His eyes began to flicker across the page as he delved into the world of the Louds…

_Long, long ago, back in the year of Our Lord 2016, there was a family known as the Louds. They were a large family, close and warm. The reason for their large size is that the heads of the household – Lynn and Rita Loud – were especially enthusiastic about forming a large family. They believed strongly in family, and knew that fewer bonds were as tightly knit as that between siblings._

_For their unions came eleven: the bossy yet well-meaning Lori; the ditzy fashionista Leni; the energetic, temperamental rocker Luna; the punny comedienne Luan; the all-star athlete Lynn Jr.; the scheming yet caring only son, Lincoln; the poetic and mysterious Lucy; the tomboyish animal-lover Lana; the sickly sweet Lola; the intellectually elite Lisa; and the young, carefree Lily._

_For seventeen years, the family lived happily and securely. They did, as all families did, fight and argue and brawl, but at the end of the day, they could always come back together peacefully and harmoniously. But there was something snaking at the back of their psyches: they were close as a family, but some were… too close. Feelings that went unsaid but were still strongly present._

_And one night, those feelings changed everything…_

One late December night, a pair of boots stopped through the thick, moonlit snow towards the Loud House. When they reached the front door of the home, the sound of jiggling keys could be heard. "_Stupid… come on n-now… gotit!_" a feminine voice slurred.

The door was unlocked, and Lori Loud stumbled into the house.

She seemed a little… off, though.

Her face, usually pretty, was now sickly glistening with a sheen of sweat. Vapors of spirits lingered in the atmosphere around her, melding with the clean air to form a rancid, choking smell. Her movements were clunky and jerky, like a woman not fully in control of her actions…

Because that's exactly what she was. Lori Loud was heavily drunk.

Lori didn't usually drink. She never found the taste of alcohol appealing, and the idea of not being in complete control of her actions was the final nail in the vodka-stained coffin of her relationship with alcohol. But one unfortunate vice of Lori's was how easily she succumbed to peer pressure. Just two weeks prior, her friends Carol and Whitney roped her into a wild girl's night out that ended at the police station. And now those same two had thrown a huge party, where smuggled beers and whiskeys were on the menu. Lori had tried to refuse, but Carol's pleading eyes and constant offers finally won her over. It was a good thing their friend Becky wasn't so easily persuaded, because in Lori's condition, she really needed a designated driver.

_Sh-Should I… wussn't there a Godzilla I was driving? No, no, like… _Van_zilla. R-Right. I pick it up tomor- after today. _

Despite her muddled thoughts, Lori knew, as she practically threw herself up the stairs, that she was going to regret what she did after today (_tomorrow! D-Dat's the wurd!_). She didn't even want to imagine the puking…

But what was a girl like her supposed to do? She was young and impressionable and had a high social standing, and at a party, all young and impressionable girls with high social standings let loose.

Besides, it was a welcome reprieve from it all: the month had been hard on her. Pressures at school were mounting, their pet dog Charles was acting up lately, and Bobby… oh, Bobby. Lori loved him a lot, but it's hard to maintain that spark of love when she got such little time to speak with him, and even less time to… _know him_, to keep it clean. She couldn't stand the mounting pressure in her loins anymore. She couldn't stand not having a man with her to love as a woman. In her drunk state, she needed to find someone like that. Someone familiar. Someone like…

_Lincoln._

Before Lori knew it, she was making her way to the converted linen closet at the end of the hall rather than her own room. Each step she took was slower than the last. Somehow, through some miracle or curse, she managed to reach his door. She licked her lips as she reached for the door handle…

_Wait! What are you doing?! You're not drunk enough to think about fucking your BROTHER, are you?_

That thought suddenly raced through her head, and she recoiled her hand with disgust. "I-I can't believe it," she breathed. "I almost tried to do… _that… _with Lincoln… with my brother..."

Things were becoming a bit more coherent now. The effects of the alcohol must've begun wearing off. Lori, for her part, covered her mouth in suspenseful terror, then turned heel and rushed back down the hall to her room.

It was a good thing she didn't open the door to Lincoln's room that night.

If she did, she might've walked in on Lincoln aggressively mating with Luna.

The eldest of the Loud siblings closed the door to her room behind her just as Lincoln came inside his rocker sister.


End file.
